Tag: Berlin Art Film Festival

One of the best things to do in Berlin in summer is to enjoy a great film en plain air. Luckily, we don’t only have a great variety of open air cinemas that screen original versions, but the locations are pretty amazing as well. Try the Freiluftkino Kreuzberg at Mariannenplatz for example, or enjoy a movie night in the park, surrounded by nature at Freiluftkino Hasenheide. The cutest and most urban of them all is the backyard cinema at the not-yet-gentrified Schwarzenberg Höfe in the middle of the posh Hackesche Höfe area. Here, Stil in Berlin‘s godchild, the Berlin Art Film Festival, launches its summer open air program with a pretty rad selection of daring Berlin films with English subtitles for five Fridays in a row. Plus, many of the filmmakers will come by for talks after the screenings.

It’s already three year’s ago that Stil in Berlin’s Mary Scherpe said “Let’s do a film festival” – more or less in passing – and two months later the first ever Berlin Art Film Festival took place at Fsk Kino. What is it all about? Art films, experimental stuff, porn, films about Berlin-based artists and poetic narratives – but in a nutshell: We want to show Berlin in a different way – edgier, fresher, beyond the canon and adding art film classics on top. The concept worked, the festival moved to Moviemento and will open its doors this Thursday for a third time. We couldn’t be more excited to introduce you to some of the highlights!

Oh, those summer nights! We have been patient, and finally they are here. The streets are buzzing, the cafés are filling up and so are the outdoor cinemas, once the sun has set. While the big ones in Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, or the one in the middle of Hasenheide are mostly re-playing the best of the year, the Berlin Art Film Festival has found a magical and secluded space in Mitte, “an island in the stream of commerce” as a jury recently called it, at the center of Hackescher Markt: the open air cinema Mitte. Throughout July, the Berlin Art Film Festival will live on that island for five nights, show some of the highlights of December’s festival again, while also having some sweet surprises in store – and an even sweeter party.

Fuck, it’s gotten cold and while the cinemas are well heated, where would you go in between screenings of the BERLIN ART FILM FESTIVAL? We almost gave up on finding the right location near the Fsk until we stumbled across one of the cosiest and sweetest places the very last minute. The official festival canteen of the BERLIN ART FILM FESTIVAL will be only a stone’s throw away (shouldn’t use that expression in Kreuzberg though) from the cinema and holds warm soup, excellent coffee, homemade Flammkuchen and free WiFi for you in store. With a cinema ticket at hand you even get a small discount on the altogther very reasonably priced delicacies – so here’s the story of a wonderful place called Dresden…

It was a mellow summer afternoon at the Stil in Berlin office when Mary Scherpe said something pretty much out of the blue: “Why don’t we do a film festival?” It wasn’t like I always had that in mind anyways plus I wouldn’t have suggested it by myself and so I just smiled with joy at the idea and Mary’s great suggestion. But what to show? My first idea was to link a festival to my weekly film column “Discover This” on Stil in Berlin and therfore to organize a re-run of all these films. But then a much better idea struck me as I browsed through the blog and thought about what it actually represents…